Reach Out This Season

November/December Service Opportunies for 2011.  Here are ideas for reaching out and serving others this season:

• Covenant World Relief is a Covenant humanitarian aid ministry that collaborates with partners around the world to provide relief, rehabilitation and transformational development. Thornapple individuals and families are invited to support CWR each fall financially.  Donations should be given to Brenda Veen in the office. Covenant Cares is a way to give gifts specifically for items to help those that CWR serves.  To learn more about it, click here.
• Purchase Christmas gifts for needy children.  Thornapple will be giving gifts to the children of prisoners at the Kent County Jail this Christmas AND we will be giving gifts to the children in our Bhutanese community.  The tags have all been taken. Please bring your wrapped gifts with tags attached to church no later than Wednesday, December 14.  
• Parties at the Jail - We now have all the volunteers we need for the jail parties. Contact Chuck Hahn or Sharon Christensen with questions.
• Students - Participate in the Down With the Grinch project on Nov. 30, 6:30-9pm. Bring $20-25 and shop for kids in the GR area who are in need.  These gifts are given to the Christmas Store at the Other Way Ministries where needy parents earn credit to purchase Christmas presents by volunteering in the community. Our students can also help deliver the gifts. 
• Call an Urban Ministry organization and ask how you can help this season.  For a list of organizations that we work with go to: www.thornapple.org/urbanopportunities. 

Numerous organizations have Christmas catalogs and ways to help that enable you to give specifically for things that will help out the needy.  Here are a few:

• Covenant World Relief Coveant Cares: Click Here
• International Justice Mission and Advent Conspiracy: Click Here
• Degage Ministries - ways to help at Christmas: Click Here
• Family Promise - holiday card program: Click Here
• Adopt a Family Program at ICCF (Inner City Christian Federation): Click Here
• Kids Food Basket Wish list: Click Here KFB Holiday gift cards: Click Here
• Kids Alive International: Click Here

Serve creatively!  Think of creative ways you could serve: bake some cookies and take them to a local retirement home or shut in, clean out your closets and donate gently used clothing or toys to the needy, put together a holiday basket for someone in need, adopt a senior in our church as a “grandparent,” offer to baby-sit for a young couple so they can go out, invite people to dinner who won’t be with family for the holidays, donate money anonymously to a family in need, volunteer at Degage or Mel Trotter’s soup kitchens, support and encourage a member of the military or their families, encourage creative giving in your family - give gifts in the name of a family member that will support organizations that reach out to the needy of the world like the International Justice Mission, Covenant World Relief and World Vision...The list of possibilities is endless.